ITAR-TASS overnight news cycle for September 12 - 4.

.RF, Kazakh, Turkmen, Azerbaijani leaders to have more contacts Sat.

AKTAU, September 12 (Itar-Tass) -- The presidents of Russia,
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan will have more informal contacts
in the seaside town of Kenderli, Kazakhstan, on Saturday.
Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Friday, the
current informal summit has no agenda.
"We shall be able to exchange opinion of any bilateral and
multi-lateral issues, and just to have a good time on the Caspian," he
said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev remarked it was a great pleasure for
him to visit this area of Kazakhstan he had never been to before. He also
agreed with Nazarbayev's opinion "the themes for discussion are many."
For his part, Azerbaijan's President Ilkham Aliyev suggested
discussing joint economic projects.
On Friday Ilkham Aliyev, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Dmitry Medvedev and
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov looked into ways of bringing about deeper
trading and economic cooperation.
Nazarbayev said that his country had a bond of sincere friendship with
Russia and that with Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan it shared a neighborly
relationship.
"By and large we have no big problems, and we can decide everything on
the basis of a consensus," he said.
The four heads of state discussed the theme of reforming the
international financial system. The Russian president said "there is the
impression that far from everybody wants this, though."
"There is the wish to stop right here and to say that everything will
be good and even better, and that nobody is to blame for anything. This is
not so," Medvedev said. "We need a fundamental overhaul of the world
financial system. It is too early to be complacent. It is important for
the international community and for the world's largest economies to take
further steps to revise and reform the international financial system," he
said.
Medvedev would like "to inform in a comradely way" the three other
presidents of Russia's position and of what it was going to propose at the
forthcoming G20 summit in Pittsburgh.
"Our countries are experiencing the effects of the world financial and
economic crisis. I suggest discussing our approaches in order to have some
sort of a common mandate to defend our positions at the forthcoming
meeting (in Pittsburgh)."
During Friday's negotiations the Caspian theme was not touched upon.
All heads of state expressed the wish for an early summit of the Caspian
states in Baku, in which Iran would take part.
"I believe that the theme of the Caspian requires a discussion
involving all littoral states. This would make it possible to go over to
the implementation of ideas voiced at the summit in Teheran and then
proceed towards the summit due in Baku," Medvedev said. He described the
proposal for another Caspian summit in Azerbaijan as productive and
stressed the idea it was crucial for the five countries concerned to come
to terms regarding certain basic parameters. The leaders of Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan agreed.
Azerbaijan's President Ilkham Aliyev told his counterparts that Baku
was making active preparations for hosting a summit of the Caspian states.
"It is very desirable we approach the summit in Baku with some
specific decisions on hand to ensure the Baku meeting, just as the
previous one in Teheran, make a strike forward," he said.

.Russians skeptical US war on terrorism effective - VCIOM poll.

MOSCOW, September 12 (Itar-Tass) -- By the eighth anniversary of the
war on terrorism they proclaimed after 9/11 the United States and its
allies have failed to achieve any tangible progress, or at least persuade
the public at large the new anti-terrorist crusade is sincere, as follows
from the results of a VCIOM opinion poll conducted on September 5-6 in 42
regions of Russia.
According to sociologists, who have compared the latest replies with
the earlier opinion polls, the Russians have retained the original degree
of skepticism towards this Washington-led campaign. Just as three years
ago, 31 percent of Russians believe that the US and its allies have been
able to achieve only sporadic success, and that neither side can count on
victory in the near future. This view is slightly more spread among the
supporters of the United Russia party (33 percent). Equal groups of
respondents - 10 percent each - believe that the United States, or, on the
contrary, the terrorists are gaining the upper hand.
The former point of view is more often expressed by the supporters of
the Right Cause, Yabloko and Patriots of Russia parties - 17 percent, and
of the Liberal Democrats - 18 percent. A third of respondents are certain
that no war is on in reality. All this is propaganda the United States and
its allies use to try to attain their selfish aims, say 31 percent. Three
years ago that group was one percentage point bigger. This sort of view is
most characteristic of the Fair Russia party electorate - 40 percent.
Most of the polled still believe that international terrorism pursues
selfish, and not political aims (38 percent). However, there are more of
those who say terrorists are out to spread radical Islam (their number has
been up from 19 percent in 2005 to 27 percent this year). At the same time
the respondents more rarely suspect terrorists of struggle for territorial
re-division of the world (25 percent against 28 percent three years ago).
The statistical error margin of this poll of an audience of 1,600 was no
more than 3.4 percent.